Shitennou
by doranobaka
Summary: WARNING: Spoilers for PGSM the liveaction show episode 25ish! Kunzite's final hour on earth.


**A/N:** SPOILER ALERT! If you haven't seen up to about episode 25 of PGSM (Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon; the live-action show), you're in for some spoilers. Not exactly massive ones, but spoilers nonetheless.

Anyway, this is just my interpretation of Kunzite's last memory about his Master. Also, I know that this scene would never be so graphic in the actual show, but I decided to fudge it a bit for dramatic effect. Please don't kill me. :D   
  
**Shitennou**   
  
All around him, the palace lay in ruins. Everything had been destroyed; even the few pillars that remained standing had cracks and gashes in them that attested to the force of the attack. What had once been white marble was now stained red with the blood of Beryl's minions and the knights of Earth alike, though Kunzite was certain that most of the blood spilled had been of his own men. If he were brutally honest with himself, he'd admit that quite a bit of it was his own.   
  
Beryl had struck like lightning: quick, fierce, and extremely deadly. Her forces, it seemed, had quadrupled in number and overrun the palace at the break of dawn. No one had seen it coming, not even Zoisite, their chief of intelligence. The only thing that could be done was to scramble around the palace and kill as many youma as possible along the way.   
  
Kunzite slowly, painfully, made his way through the rubble. He took great care not to tread on the bodies of his subordinates, though sometimes he would go out of his way to viciously kick youma aside. There had been no hope for them, he reflected. The only possible outcome was this: a complete rout of the Earth's remaining forces.   
  
He limped on, his shield-arm hanging like a dead weight at his side. The sun shone brightly through the settling dust, and Kunzite loathed it. This was a dark day; the sun had no right to intrude. His men should be allowed to rest in peace, not laid bare by the blinding light.   
  
For a while, Kunzite sluggishly picked his way through the ruins, faltering every so often because of his wounds. It took him some time to realize where his feet were leading him, and then it was all he could do to keep from tripping over marble slabs as he dashed forward.   
  
In all of his haste to repel the enemies at the gate, he'd left his fellow Shitennou to fend for themselves against the invading hordes of youma! Kunzite cursed himself thoroughly; Jadeite, Nephrite, and Zoisite were capable, certainly, but against these odds? Kunzite was the sole survivor out of the several dozen men he took to battle, and he had been badly injured.   
  
What chance did the others have with no one else to aid them?   
  
His vision grayed (a result of blood loss, he supposed), and what had once been the long and elegant halls of the palace seemed to stretch forever between him and where he'd last seen his comrades. The pain in his almost certainly broken shield arm fought desperately to slow him, but he paid it no heed. Instead, he managed to unbuckle the mangled shield and toss it aside without so much as losing a step. The fact that he was leaving a sizeable trail of blood also failed to stop him.   
  
When he reached the central courtyard, his breath came in ragged, gulping gasps, his legs trembled fiercely, and his eyelids seemed weighted by heavy stones. Still, he refused to succumb to his wounds. "Only a little farther," he hissed through clenched teeth. "Just a little farther."   
  
With most of the adrenaline rush gone, Kunzite was reduced once again to the slow and painful limp. It took what seemed forever to reach the centre of the courtyard, longer even than the dash to get there to begin with. The sun seemed even more harsh, here, and Kunzite was forced to squint against it. "Jadeite! Zoisite! Nephrite!" he called hoarsely.   
  
There came no answer, and, with a few more steps, he saw why.   
  
The youma hadn't even had the decency to confront them, for there were but three corpses to be seen. There, Jadeite laid, his torso crushed, pinned by a column which had been knocked over during the siege. Next to him laid Zoisite, a massive shard of marble piercing his abdomen. Finally, on the far side, Nephrite laid sprawled, his head and face covered with his own congealed blood.   
  
The thing which caused Kunzite to fall to his knees was not the blood, or the fact that the enemy had not fought honorably. It was the vacant, glassy-eyed stare with which the three men he'd once considered brothers favored him. That stare, which he'd seen so many times on his opponents after he'd driven his sword through their chests, pierced his heart and made his stomach clench.   
  
He swallowed, though his mouth had long since gone dry. The serene, almost beatific way those empty eyes gazed at him was so utterly _wrong_. For a moment, he could only gaze back and hope that perhaps their eyelids would flicker or their fingers might twitch.   
  
But nothing happened. Kunzite could not help but wonder at the irony of it all, then. They were Shitennou! They were the mightiest men on the entire planet save for Endymion, and yet three of them had been felled without so much as a single enemy dead by their hands.   
  
That thought made his blood run cold and his eyes widen with sudden rage. They were four of the most powerful men on the planet, but there was yet one man more powerful than they. And he had not even been there to watch his generals fall. The one man who might have saved them was on that wretched moon having his way with that foreign princess.   
  
He pulled his lips back into a snarl and lifted his sword. He drew in one last breath and let out a most terrible howl of hatred and pain and vengeance which left his throat raw. Master Endymion, he thought, I will not forgive you.   
  
Finally, his wounds claimed him. His sword clattered to the ground as he fell forward, not to rise again.


End file.
